10 Most Likely Ways You’ll Die During an Economic Collapse

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

From the most banal to the downright terrifying, there are numerous deadly traps waiting for you on the other side of an economic collapse. There are many ways to lose your life in a world without rule of law where demand far outstrips the goods and services of our modern world.

We have watched South American nations suffer through economic collapse. We have seen trucks filled with resources looted by the desperate. We have watched violence overtake a nation as only the strong and adaptive survive the perils of societal collapse.

What are the things that will really get ya in an economic collapse? What is going to take you out? There are many killers. Some you can prepare for and others that might sneak up on you.

If the banks close and your money is worthless, will you be ready? Do you have a plan to survive an American economic collapse? Here are the 10 most likely ways you’ll die during an economic collapse.

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1. Infection

This might sound silly, but infection has killed lots of people over time. In a financial collapse we are not going to have the medical system that we have today. You will not be able to just get in and see a doctor when you feel like it. Things like antibiotics might not even be available.

Do you know how to treat infections with things like garlic and herbs? Learning to grow and forage medicine might be a great goal for you in 2024.

Without antibiotics people are going to die from all kinds of infections big and small. Death by infection is no fun and it is not something you want to experience. You can purchase backup antibiotics now, so you are prepared later. Organizations like The Wellness Company are selling prescriptions for backup antibiotics.

2. Desperate People

Some people were ruined during the recession of 2008, but it will be much worse when desperate people are looking for things like food and water to feed their loved ones. These are the people who are totally unprepared.

Unfortunately, that is most people in our world. They are unprepared but as long asthe system allows them to live the life, they have become accustomed to, then everything is smooth. The moment the food is gone, the water is gone, the medicine is gone and someone they love is dying, all bets are off.

Desperate people are going to do desperate things. If you find yourself at the other end of a gun barrel held by one of these desperate people, it could be your end.

3. Evil People

Evil is out there. It’s out there and it’s just waiting for the lights to go out. While the previous group of people will kill you in the face of desperation, this group of people might already be out there killing people. Or they could be the type who have stood at their door with every intention of leaving to do the job but just never gathered enough courage to follow through with murder, rape, or torture.

Well, when the police tap out and the lights go out, these predators will be stalking the streets. In a collapse there will be a certain number of people who are just out there to cause pain and suffering.

4. Starvation

If you are not producing food, then all the food you can store is just a buffer between you and starvation in an economic collapse. When the trucks stop running foodthen your resupply comes to an end. No matter how much or how little food you have stored, it will run out eventually.

What happens when your food runs out? Either you find more, make more, or you starve to death. Storing and producing food seems so strange to many people in a nation where obesity is a serious issue and there are stores on every corner bursting with food.

5. Food Poisoning

This is another massive killer that will affect those who are starving or running out of food in an economic collapse. As food becomes more and more scarce people will be taking greater risks to fill their bellies. This could be killing people and taking their food, or it might be eating food that is unsafe.

Food will begin to degrade with time, get moldy or spoiled. However, eating that food might seem like a better idea than starvation. Without medical attention severe food poisoning can be deadly. If you do not have access to things like clean water and electrolytes, you might be killed by a severe bout of food poisoning.

6. Dehydration

Access to clean water is undoubtedly something we take for granted in our lives. If you simply shut the water off to a major metro area in the US, you would see chaos like nothing you could imagine. In an economic collapse, we could see people in our country dying of dehydration because of access to water or access to clean water.

Death by dehydration would not only be a water access problem but also an issue of climate control. Every year people die from heat exhaustion and overheating in this country. Imagine if none of us had access to fans or air conditioning!

7. Heat Stroke

In an economic collapse electricity is either going to be too costly or completely unavailable. This is how you will find yourself suffering in the hot weather months. If you overexert yourself in the heat and have no means of cooling yourself down, then you could experience heat stroke.

A heat stroke is usually characterized by a temperature of 104 degrees or higher. If you cannot cool down, then your organs can be damaged, or you can die.

8. The Cold

Just as the heat can be deadly, so can the cold. We lose people to the cold each year, too. Imagine a world with no heat, electricity, or shelters of any kind. The winters would be a nightmare for people to deal with.

Those who could chop wood and burn it wouldfare much better. That said, our dense population centers are just not prepared for that kind of cold without some kind of manmade heat.

9. Suffocation from Kerosene or Propane Heat Indoors

If an economic collapse crushes the nation’s ability to produce or import energy then people are going to, again, turn to desperation. Every year we hear about at least one family that cannot afford to heat their home and they close the house tight and start using propane heaters. They go to sleep warm, and cozy and they never wake up.

These heating systems use up all the oxygen in the home and whole families die in their sleep.

This is a very likely cause of death if you have no other option but to use propane or kerosene heaters to try and stay warm. Windows need to be cracked and you should be near a flow of fresh air.

10. Suicide

This is the darkest cause of death on our list, but we must give it its due. In 2008 we saw a dramatic rise in suicides with 10,000 being linked to the recession. This rise happened in the US and in Europe.That, of course, was a recession. A financial collapse is going to be much, much worse.

If we are talking about wholesale failures of our institutions, hyperinflation, death in the streets, and so on, then there are going to be a lot of people who just pull the plug. They aren’t going to live through that. Suicide is going to be a serious cause of death in SHTF.

We live in the most convenient and comfortable time in history and more people are on meds for depression than ever before. What do you think will happen when things get bad?

Also, don’t be so sure that you won’t one day decide that life in a fallen nation is not worth living.

Final Thoughts on Death by Economic Collapse

Have you ever really considered just how bad an economic collapse could be? It is one of those disasters that truly affects everything. We have seen other countries fall into the throes of financial collapse and it is never pretty.

Most of the time a collapse like this is brought on by insane financial policies. Our runaway debt in the tens of trillions is enough to terrify anyone into preparing. However, we are also several years into the brilliant experiment of Modern Monetary Theory. Which is our governments way of saying, “We can spend all the money we want and there will be no consequences.”

Those boisterous proclamations from the government always go so well!

Prepare yourself for life off the grid and life where money doesn’t do anything that it used to. Could we escape a financial collapse, maybe. The way things are going though, doesn’t seem likely.

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